SEO Course

🥇Top Tier: Gold Standard (Paid & Highly Respected)

These are comprehensive, in-depth, and up-to-date. This is the level of investment to be expected from a serious commitment to YouTube.

1. Video Ranking Academy by TubeBuddy

Who is it for: YouTubers, small businesses, and anyone who desires to adopt a data-driven and tool-assisted approach to their YouTube activities.
Why is it good: One of the most popular and trustworthy extensions for YouTube management and analysis, TubeBuddy offers a course that is the result of extensive experimentation and research. It is all about the process: video creation, promotion, publishing, and testing a hypothesis. The course is organized, well-structured, and extremely detailed, providing a useful framework for any serious creator.
Key Focus: Keyword research, Thumbnail & Title A/B testing, Data Analysis, Video SEO Score.

2. YouTube Masterclass by Ali Abdaal

Target audience: Aspiring educational creators, YouTubers looking to build a personal brand, and those who appreciate a “productivity” focused approach.
The good: Ali is a former doctor who built a huge channel, and his course is all about systematizing the process of making high-ranking videos. While he does provide some solid “hacks,” the main focus is on the underlying philosophy of value provision and the specific productivity techniques that allow him to script a video in an hour.
Key topics: Idea generation, scripting, batching, editing productivity, and “How to Script a Video in 1 Hour” concept.

3. The Part-Time YouTuber Academy by Noah Kagan

Target audience: Entrepreneurs, freelancers, and aspiring YouTubers who wish to scale their business through a YouTube network rather than focus on a YouTube brand. The course is perfect for those who are not going to make their living on YouTube but still want to use it as a marketing tool to promote their business.
The course’s main strength is that Noah Kagan represents a strong business and marketing mindset. In other words, he is not going to make you a YouTube expert but help you get your content in front of more people by focusing on the business side of the coin. The course is more about the content’s marketing rather than how to optimize the algorithm. Part-time YouTuber focuses on business cases for YouTube, how to launch the channel, content creation for lead generation, and content repurposing.

🥈 Excellent & Free Resources (to Start With!)

Do not waste your money on courses right away. The information is scattered around the web; some resources are much better than most of the paid guides.

1. YouTube Creator Academy (the source itself!)

Description: The source information is always the best and one of the easiest to access! YouTube’s own official source, 100% FREE!
It may seem a bit corporate at first, but it defines the main metric for success on the platform — Audience Satisfaction. It will tell you what the algorithm is looking for, and what you need to build your channel around. This is vital to watch through and understand before you invest hard-earned money into courses!
How to find it: your YouTube Studio (on the left side, under the “Learn” tab).

2. Free Content of Successful Creators

Many influential people on the internet offer their best lessons about the field for free on their own channel. It is worth watching their content extensively to find the necessary information about growing on YouTube.

Channel: Think Media
Topic: The channel focuses on the practical and quick application of knowledge about the field. The creators are experts at making thumbnails and titles that actually work. In addition, they often give useful tips and advice about equipment and editing.
Search terms: “YouTube SEO 2024,” “How to Get More Views,” “Thumbnail Design Tutorial”
Channel: Video Influencers
Topic: This source primarily covers strategies and provides in-depth explanations about many aspects of the algorithm. Sean Cannell and his team of influencers discuss the essential mentalities for succeeding. The channel offers high-quality production and comprehensive information about the field.
Search terms: “YouTube Algorithm Explained,” “How the YouTube Algorithm Works in 2024”
Channel: Nick Nimmin
Topic: The main specialization of the channel is short and precise tips. Nick is great at simplifying the complex material about the area. The creator usually sorts his advice by topics on the YouTube platform.
Search terms: “YouTube Tips,” “How to [specific task] in YouTube Studio”
Channel: MrBeast (and his team)
Topic: Even though the beast does not have any course, his podcast with various guests and channel’s videos are filled with valuable content. It is worth watching the creator’s interviews and analyzing his advice about the platform’s algorithm, thumbnails, and ideas.

What to look for in ANY YouTube SEO Course

No matter what, any decent course should cover these topics:
Research

How to research keywords and topics (Google Trends, YouTube search suggest, Tubebuddy, viidIQ etc)
Click through rate (CTR) engine
Thumbnail psychology (how to make thumbnails that stop scrolls)
Title writing (title that pairs well with thumbnail)
Audience retention engine
How to write a script/video that keeps viewers watching
Editing techniques (editing your videos to keep the audience)
YouTube’s BEST framework (how to make BEST videos)
Believable – trustworthy
Entertaining – engaging
Surveyable – easy to watch
Targeted – for a particular audience
After upload optimization
How to write description, apply tags, endscreens, playlists etc
YouTube studio analytics (how to read data, what to do with it, particularly audience retention and traffice sources)
Final thoughts and recommendation
It is better not to invest any money before trying free resources. Try watching videos from YouTube Creator Academy, think media and video influencers. This way you will get about 80% value for your effort. If after 3-6 months you are still not satisfied and want to take you channel to the next level, you can invest in Video Ranking Academy or Ali’s Abdaal masterclass.
Do not invest in get rich quick schemes, any course that promises 1M views or some sort of unfair advantage over others is a scam. Making money on YouTube is not something that can be achieved overnight, it takes time and effort, and you have to provide value for a particular niche audience.